Event at UCL: ‘How nearly everything in Dr Strangelove is true’

November 26, 2014 Comments are off

On 25th November 2014 at the UCL Institute of Global Governance, Thomas Nash, Director of Article 36, joined Eric Schlosser, investigative journalist and author of ‘Command and Control’, for a discussion on the enduring threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons.

Schlosser’s book, ‘Command and Control’, looks at the dilemmas faced by states in maintaining nuclear arsenals whilst avoiding accidental or unauthorised detonations, thefts, or sabotage of the weapons. Using declassified documents and interviews with individuals involved, Schlosser sets out past ‘near misses’ and analyses the continuing risk the maintenance of these weapons pose. At this event, Schlosser discussed the trade-off between military requirements for reliability and civilian need for stringent safety and the avoidance of accidents. He highlighted the anomaly that nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction that are not banned. Schlosser also proposed the irrelevance of ‘nuclear deterrance’ to preventing armed conflict in an increasingly economically interdependent world.

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Following conferences in Oslo in 2013 and Narayit in early 2014, the latest meeting to discuss the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons involving states and civil society was held in December 2014 in Vienna. This resulted in a pledge by Austria to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”. Article 36 has analysed the effects of nuclear weapons under international law, publishing a briefing paper to coincide with the Vienna conference.